Combray family; France -- History -- Consulate and First Empire, 1799-1815
It is not easy to follow d'Ache in the mysterious work upon which he
entered: the precautions he took to escape the police have caused him to
be lost to posterity as well. Some slight landmarks barely permit our
following his trail during the few years which form the climax of his
wonderful career.
We find him first of all during the autumn of 1806, at La Bijude, where
Mme. de Combray, who had remained at Tournebut had charged Bonnoeil
and Mme. Acquet to go and receive him. There was some question of
providing him with a messenger familiar with the haunts of the Chouans
and the dangers connected with the task. To fulfil this duty Mme. Acquet
proposed a German named Flierle whom Le Chevalier recommended. Flierle
had distinguished himself in the revolt of the Chouans; a renowned
fighter, he had been mixed up in every plot. He was in Paris at the time
of the eighteenth Fructidor; he turned up there again at the moment when
Saint-Rejant was preparing his infernal machine; he again spent three
months there at the time of Georges' conspiracy. For the last two years,
whilst waiting for a fresh engagement, he had lived on a small pension
from the royal treasury, and when funds were low, he made one of his
more fortunate companions in old days put him up; and thus he roamed
from Caen to Falaise, from Mortain to Bayeux or Saint-Lo, even going
into Mayenne in his wanderings. Although he would never have
acknowledged it, we may say that he was one of the men usually employed
in attacking public vehicles: in fact, he was an adept at it and went by
the name of the "Teisch."
Summoned to La Bijude he presented himself there one morning towards the
end of October. D'Ache arrived there the same evening while they were at
dinner. They talked rather vaguely of the great project, but much of
their old Chouan comrades. In spite of his decided German accent Flierle
was inexhaustible on this theme. He and d'Ache slept in the same room,
and this intimacy lasted two whole days, at the end of which it was
decided that Flierle should be employed as a messenger at a salary of
fifty crowns a month. That same night, Lanoe conducted d'Ache two
leagues from La Bijude and left him on the road to Arjentan.
Here is a new landmark: on November 26th, Veyrat, the inspector of
police, hastily informed Desmarets that d'Ache, whom they had been
seeking for two years, had arrived the night before in Paris, getting
out of the coach from Rennes in the company of a man named Durand. The
latter, leaving his trunk at the office, spent the night at a house in
the Rue Montmartre, whence he departed the next morning for Boulogne. As
for d'Ache, wrote Veyrat, he had neither box nor parcel, and disappeared
as soon as he got out of the carriage. Search was made in all the
furnished lodgings and hotels in the neighbourhood, but without result.
Desmarets set all his best men to work, but in vain: d'Ache was not to
be found.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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